Stryker Brigade News

"The Army has to understand the regulation that says women can't be placed in direct-fire situations is archaic and not attainable," said Lt. Col. Cheri Provancha, commander of a Stryker Brigade support battalion in Mosul, who decided to bend Army rules and allow Guay to serve as a medic for an infantry company of the 82nd Airborne. Under a 1994 policy, women are excluded from units at the level of battalion and below that engage in direct ground combat.

"This war has proven that we need to revisit the policy, because they are out there doing it," said Provancha, a 21-year Army veteran from San Diego. [...]

"We live and work with the infantry," said Maj. Mary Prophit, 42, who heads a four-person civil-affairs team with a Stryker battalion in Mosul. An Army reservist and librarian from Glenoma, Lewis County, Wash., Prophit handles security duties from the hatch of a Stryker armored vehicle, watching houses during searches and returning fire when shot at. "Civil-affairs teams have to be prepared to perform infantry functions, because at any time we could be diverted," she said.

In January, Prophit was delivering kerosene heaters to a Mosul school when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb as her convoy passed, fatally wounding three Iraqi soldiers. Prophit moved to shield the medic treating the wounded, firing at insurgents who were shooting at them from a mosque across the street. "Women in combat is no longer an argument," she said matter-of-factly at her camp near the Mosul air field. "There is no rear area."

We can't post all of it here, but I would recommend reading the entire article.